New/old look for goalies Price, Halak

The bulky leg pads barely reach Price’s knees, the thick brown horsehide probably stuffed with cotton sheeting and the tropical-tree fibre kapok, stitched shut at the top and back with rubber and felt.

He figures that, bone dry, they weigh about the same as his own pads. Impressive, until you consider Price’s virtually waterproof pads are at least one-third larger, and these old ones would absorb a litre or more of moisture during a game.

“My dad had pads like these,” he says of his father, Jerry, a minor-pro goalie from 1978-83 who was a sixth-round Philadelphia Flyers draft pick in ’78.

“I think I wore them once. You know, for fun.”

But the mask … now this is something truly special.

Price cradles the replica of the fibreglass mask Canadiens legend Jacques Plante wore into a game for the first time on Nov. 1, 1959, forever changing the face of goaltending. He rolls it around in his hands, studying every bump and scratch, then wrestles it on, adjusting the elastic straps before rapping his knuckles against his cheek and wincing at the impact of just that.

“If I ever took a shot in the face,” he says, voice muffled by a breathing hole that doesn’t quite reach his mouth, “it would split both of my temples.

“I look at what goalies used to wear and I guess that’s why they got hurt so much.”

Looking down from directly above Price’s Bell Sports Complex dressing-room stall is Canadiens goaltending icon Georges Vézina, who’d have thought he was in heaven with equipment this good.

The pads loosely strapped to his bare legs, Price soon is sprawled on the carpeted floor, hot-dogging saves with his own play-by-play commentary.

“I can almost see out of the mask,” he says brightly, his smile evaporating when he hears the suggestion that this might be the NHL’s scheme for downsizing goalies.

Price makes his last phantom save after just a few minutes, unsure about the stress on his hips as he tries to lift his heavy legs.

(We hope we're not the reason for the lower-body injury the goalie is nursing this week, the team saying he was hurt in practice the day we shot our photos for this feature.)

The Canadiens are celebrating their 100th season with a number of tributes to their yesterdays. Among them are vintage jersey nights, the team wearing sweaters, pants and gloves modelled to recall their historic past.

And for a half-dozen or so Bell Centre games against Original Six rivals, Price and fellow goalie Jaroslav Halak will be equipped with vintage-look brown pads and gloves, adding to the throwback look.

Price wore the flashback gear for the first time in a game on Dec. 4 against the New York Rangers, a 6-2 Canadiens victory. It will make its next appearance in the Feb. 1 matinée against Boston.

“I thought the idea was pretty cool,” Price says of the vintage look, having been dazzled by photos of it before the equipment arrived at the Bell Centre.

Halak recalls having worn brown leather for a couple practices when he was 8, starting out in Bratislava.

“It’s a good look,” he says. “Every time I look at them, it reminds me of when I was younger.”

Canadiens marketing vice-president Ray Lalonde recommended vintage equipment to general manager Bob Gainey for use this season. It then was passed along to equipment manager Pierre Gervais.

A call was placed last summer to Jorg Achenbach of Vaughn Hockey, which outfits both Price and Halak, and the hunt was on to find what was needed for the manufacture of two pairs of pads and gloves.

That’s all that have and likely will be made, though Lalonde says general equipment plans will be revised for next season, the Canadiens marking the centennial of their birth on Dec. 4, 2009.

Vaughn located a material that has most of the properties of leather, one which is more porous and absorbs more water than the synthetics used in the goalies’ regular pads. Price and Halak notice the difference in weight, though they say it’s manageable.

“You wouldn’t want to play 82 games in them, since weight is everything,” Achenbach says.

“The real trick was finding the material that would do this whole thing justice. It would have been easy to go cheap and find something that didn’t do it right. Once we found it, it was just a standard process of building their gear.”

The larger problem – the pads sticking to the ice as Price and Halak pushed through the crease in the butterfly position – was solved with the application of a commercially sold beeswax waterproofing protectant. The goalies say the new/old pads now slide at least as well as their regular ones.

“The specifications are exactly as they (usually) wear,” Achenbach says. “The strap setup, leg channel, knee stacks, the gloves – they’re 100-per-cent what they wear on a daily basis.

“The change is cosmetic and, of course, the material.”

Kay Whitmore, the former NHL netminder who now is the league’s goaltending supervisor, signed off on the pads and gloves without delay.

“The NHL’s only concern is that the equipment adheres to rules for sizing and specifications,” Achenbach says. “They don’t care about cosmetics.”

Once the game begins, Price and Halak wouldn’t care if they were wearing pads and gloves designed by a hippie having a bad acid trip. A stopped puck is a stopped puck.

But the idea of looking like an old-time goaler has a certain appeal – as long as the bulletproof armour remains beneath their sweaters and the Jacques Plante mask stays under glass at the Hall of Fame.

“If Josh wants me to wear this stuff, fine,” Price says of Gorges. “But only if he takes off his cup and shin pads.”